Daniel Lee Corwin was sentenced to death in Conroe, Texas, in March 1990 for the 1987 killings of three women in Central Texas: Alice Martin, 72, Debra Ewing, who was 26 or 27, and Mary Risinger, 36. Each was attacked in a public place, according to the Associated Press. The three killings were tried together under a recently added provision of the Texas capital murder law that covers the murder of more than one person in different criminal transactions under the same scheme or course of conduct. The AP described the case as one of the first tests of that law.
He was caught because a woman he attacked in October 1988, a student at Texas A&M University, survived. A composite sketch, an anonymous tip and a fingerprint on her vehicle led police to his door in Huntsville within days. He was on parole at the time, after serving about nine years of a 40-year sentence for a 1975 attack in Bell County. He pleaded guilty to attempted capital murder in the A&M case and received 99 years. While serving that sentence he confessed to the three 1987 killings. He was executed at Huntsville on December 7, 1998, at the age of 40.
The Battalion, the Texas A&M student newspaper, called him "a Temple man" when it reported his execution in 1998.
In 1975, while he was still a juvenile, Corwin attacked a woman in Bell County. She survived. He was charged in 1976 and convicted in Bell County, with other charges, and he received a 40-year prison sentence, according to The Battalion (1988 and 1989), an AP report of 1993 and the federal appeals court opinion of 1998. One later report, in The Battalion in 1998, gave the year of the case as 1976 and the sentence as 45 years; the earlier reports and the court record give 40.
He served about nine years in the Texas Department of Corrections. The Battalion reported in November 1988 that he was paroled on November 20, 1985, and that he had been on unsupervised parole since his release. Another Battalion report, in 1989, said he had served nearly 10 years.
By 1988 he was living in Huntsville. Police said that year that he had not attended the university since withdrawing with failing grades in May 1987, according to The Battalion. The newspaper also reported, after his execution, that he had posed as a Texas A&M student, riding with students between Huntsville and College Station.
Alice Martin was 72. On February 13, 1987, she went out for her morning walk and did not come home, The Battalion reported in 1989. The federal appeals court record says she was walking on a farm-to-market road in Madison County when she was abducted. She was sexually assaulted and killed. The Battalion's reports place her killing in the Normangee area; the AP listed Robertson County among the counties where the three women died.
In November 1988, after Corwin's arrest in the A&M case, officials in Madison and Walker counties said they wanted to question him about three killings committed over the previous year and a half, but police told The Battalion they had little evidence in those cases.
Debra Ewing was abducted in July 1987 from her workplace in Huntsville, according to the federal court record, which gives her age as 26. The AP gave her age as 27 in 1990. Her body was found two days later in Montgomery County, The Battalion reported. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled and stabbed, according to the court record.
Mary Risinger was 36. On the evening of October 31, 1987, Halloween, she was killed in Huntsville while washing her car. The federal appeals court described it as an attempted abduction; she was stabbed to death.
The federal appeals court summed up the three killings as taking place "over the course of nine months in 1987." The AP's 1993 report named Montgomery, Robertson and Walker as the counties where the women died.
On Thursday, October 20, 1988, a Texas A&M University student was abducted on the College Station campus. She was attacked and left for dead, but she survived and reached help. The attacker had used her vehicle.
The search began the same day. The Battalion reported on October 24 that the Department of Public Safety had sent a helicopter and that the Texas Department of Corrections had searched the area with four bloodhounds. College Station police were processing fingerprints from the vehicle; the prints were latent and could not be identified until they were compared with a suspect's. The University Police Department director, Bob Wiatt, said his officers and the College Station police were "actively following leads in the case," and police said that a suspect, once caught, would most likely be charged with attempted capital murder. Police asked students who had been on the west side of campus, or on shuttle buses there, around noon that day to come forward.
Police released a composite sketch of the attacker on October 24 and received more than a hundred tips, The Battalion reported. The sketch was drawn by Karen T. Taylor, a forensic artist with the Texas Department of Public Safety, who has written on her own website that she built it from the survivor's description and that after it was publicized several people named Corwin.
According to The Battalion's arrest report of October 31, 1988, Corwin became a suspect on October 22 after an anonymous Crime Stoppers tip from Madison County. The Madison County sheriff, Ed Fannin, passed the tip on and identified Corwin to Wiatt. The Battalion's 1998 account said the call came from the sheriff, whose friend had suggested Corwin.
Investigators then learned that he was not a student. Police put him under surveillance because he resembled the sketch. Wiatt obtained his fingerprints from authorities in Huntsville, and they matched latent prints from the vehicle. A witness picked him out of a photo lineup.
Officers from the University Police Department, the College Station Police Department, the Huntsville Police Department and the Walker County Sheriff's Office arrested Corwin at his home in Huntsville on a Friday night late in October 1988. He was 30. Police searched his apartment under a warrant and took evidence, but would not say what they found.
He was booked into the Brazos County Jail on four charges: attempted capital murder, sexual assault, aggravated kidnapping and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. Bail was set at $50,000 on each charge; The Battalion later reported a total bond of $200,000. A live lineup was put off until the survivor was well enough to attend, said Maj. Edgar Feldman of the College Station police.
Speaking after Corwin's execution, Wiatt told The Battalion that it was the A&M case that got Corwin identified, and that the work of university and city officers had played a part in the death sentence he later received for the three killings.
Corwin pleaded guilty in Brazos County District Court to attempted capital murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison; The Battalion reported on March 1, 1989, that the sentence had been handed down the week before. Under the plea agreement prosecutors dropped a second, sexual-assault charge. He would be eligible for parole after 15 years, the paper said; a report later that year put his first parole eligibility in 2003. The Battalion's 1998 report described the 99-year term as being for attempted capital murder and aggravated sexual assault.
In 1989, while serving the 99-year sentence, Corwin confessed to investigators that he had abducted and killed the three women in 1987, The Battalion reported in November of that year. The Montgomery County district attorney, Peter Speers, said his office had "numerous signed statements of these murders" and a videotape of Corwin confessing to the killings. The Battalion's 1998 report placed the confessions about two years into his sentence. An AP report of 1993 said he had confessed to six crimes in all.
In November 1989 Speers announced that he would seek the death penalty. Hearings in the 359th District Court in Conroe were to decide whether the confessions could be used as evidence, and Speers expected jury selection to begin by the middle of January 1990.
The charge rested on a provision of Section 19.03 of the Texas Penal Code that makes it capital murder to kill more than one person "during different criminal transactions" when the murders are committed "pursuant to the same scheme or course of conduct." At the time of Corwin's conviction the provision was numbered 19.03(a)(6)(B); it was later renumbered (a)(7)(B), according to the federal appeals court.
Jury selection opened without Corwin in the courtroom. On the first day, when prospective jurors filled in questionnaires and claimed exemptions and excuses, he was absent; he appeared for the questioning of jurors that followed and did not object to any of the excusals made in his absence, the federal court later noted. One prospective juror was excused after repeatedly saying she would demand a higher burden of proof than the law required.
The trial was held in the court of state District Judge James Keeshan. The jury found Corwin guilty of capital murder in March 1990. In the punishment phase it heard, the federal court said, strong evidence that he had killed three different women. The prosecution also introduced a six-foot painting Corwin had made in tempera on butcher paper, showing a fanged, serpent-like figure with a human torso. The prosecutor called it a "self portrait" and told the jury the figure lived within Corwin. At another point the prosecutor told the jurors they could "reasonably assume from the evidence that there are more dead women out there"; Corwin's lawyers objected, and the judge told the jury to disregard the remark.
The same Montgomery County jury deliberated for about 35 minutes before sentencing him to death by lethal injection, the AP reported on March 21, 1990. Corwin was 31.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, sitting en banc, affirmed the conviction and death sentence in Corwin v. State, 870 S.W.2d 23, in 1993. The AP reported the ruling in September of that year.
Corwin then sought habeas corpus relief in the state courts. On March 10, 1997, the Montgomery County trial court recommended that relief be denied, and on April 23, 1997, the Court of Criminal Appeals adopted those findings and denied his application. An execution date was set for August 14, 1997. Amnesty International, which had appealed for clemency, reported on August 29, 1997, that he had received a stay; it did not know the reasons.
On August 13, 1997, Corwin filed a federal habeas petition in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. On September 18, 1997, the district court granted the state's motion for summary judgment and refused a certificate of appealability.
He asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for a certificate on eight issues. A panel of Judges King, Higginbotham and W. Eugene Davis denied it in an opinion by Davis, revised August 26, 1998. The court held that his complaint about his absence from the first day of jury selection was barred because he had not objected at trial. It found that the excusal of the juror who demanded a higher burden of proof was a reasonable application of the law. It rejected his argument that the "same scheme or course of conduct" provision was unconstitutionally vague, relying on its earlier decision in Anderson v. Collins and on the Texas court's narrowing reading of the statute. It assumed, without deciding, that the painting should not have been admitted, but held that the error was harmless because "the evidence against Corwin was overwhelming." It found the instruction to disregard the "more dead women" remark adequate and rejected his claim of cumulative error. The court vacated the stay of execution it had granted.
Corwin was executed by lethal injection at Huntsville on Monday, December 7, 1998, shortly after 6 p.m., The Battalion reported. He was 40. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice lists him as offender number 969 and as the 162nd person executed in Texas, convicted in Montgomery County. The Battalion reported that a final appeal was denied that day.
In his last statement, recorded by the department, he thanked two people for the opportunity they had given him. He apologized to the family and said, "I just ask and hope that sometime down the line that you can forgive me." He said the death penalty was "two sided" and that there was "pain on both sides." His last words were "I love you."
Alice Martin's name and town. The federal court record and the AP give her name as Alice Martin; one Battalion report of November 1989 called her "Mary Martin" and placed her walk in Madisonville. Other Battalion reports place her killing in the Normangee area.
Debra Ewing's age. The federal court record gives 26; the AP in 1990 gave 27.
The counties of the three killings. The federal court record names Montgomery, Madison and Robertson counties in its discussion; the AP in 1993 named Montgomery, Robertson and Walker.
The Bell County case. Most reports give 1975 as the year of the attack, a 40-year sentence and parole in 1985 after about nine years; The Battalion in 1998 gave 1976 and 45 years, and a 1989 report said "nearly 10 years" served.
The timing of his confessions. Reports of November 1989 say he confessed earlier that year; a 1998 report says about two years into his sentence.
The 99-year sentence. The March 1989 report says a sexual-assault charge was dropped under the plea agreement; the 1998 report says the sentence was for attempted capital murder and aggravated sexual assault.
Other crimes. The AP reported in 1993 that he had confessed to six crimes; the prosecutor's suggestion at trial that there were "more dead women out there" was struck by the judge, and no other killing was charged.
"First" under the statute. The AP called his trial one of the first tests of the multiple-murder provision; whether he was the first person convicted under it is not established.
1975: Corwin, then a juvenile, attacks a woman in Bell County; she survives. Charged in 1976 and convicted, with other charges; sentenced to 40 years.
November 20, 1985: paroled after about nine years in prison.
February 13, 1987: Alice Martin, 72, disappears on her morning walk in Madison County and is killed.
May 1987: withdraws from university classes with failing grades, police later say.
July 1987: Debra Ewing is abducted from her workplace in Huntsville; her body is found two days later in Montgomery County.
October 31, 1987: Mary Risinger, 36, is killed while washing her car in Huntsville.
October 20, 1988: a Texas A&M student is abducted in College Station and left for dead; she survives.
October 22, 1988: an anonymous tip from Madison County names Corwin.
October 24, 1988: police release the composite sketch.
Late October 1988: arrested at his Huntsville home; charged in Brazos County.
Early 1989 (reported March 1): pleads guilty to attempted capital murder; 99 years.
1989: confesses to the three 1987 killings.
November 1989: Montgomery County District Attorney Peter Speers announces he will seek the death penalty.
March 1990: convicted of capital murder in Conroe and sentenced to death.
September 1993: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirms (Corwin v. State, 870 S.W.2d 23).
April 23, 1997: state habeas relief denied.
August 1997: execution set for August 14 is stayed; federal habeas petition filed August 13.
September 18, 1997: federal district court denies relief.
August 1998: Fifth Circuit denies a certificate of appealability and vacates the stay.
December 7, 1998: executed by lethal injection at Huntsville, aged 40.